We seriously cripple Palestine and Palestinians when we use the word
"pro-Palestine" interchangeably with "anti-Israel". Look at the big
picture: Pro-Israel is more than sixty sovereign years of Israeli
diplomacy and hasbara and state building efforts aimed at providing
jobs and security to Israeli citizens.

Many of the most articulate anti-Israel activists are Jewish
individuals fixated on and enraged by Israel. Anti-Israel activists
tend to promote a one state agenda alongside Boycott Israel efforts,
convincing their friends and associates to scorn negotiations and
Palestinian state building efforts. They should be free to do that,
but in doing that they most certainly should not be called
pro-Palestine.

Pro-Palestine is about Palestine, not Israel. Effective and helpful
and fully honest pro-Palestine advocacy empowers Palestinians as
fully accountable state building citizens, engaged in a modern
global world and a crucially important conversation concerning
negotiations to end the Israel-Palestine conflict with a just and
lasting peace based on international law and full respect for
universal human rights.

The words we choose to use to understand and define the conflict
have the power to either exasperate or end the conflict. For
instance, Hussein Ibish of the American Task Force on Palestine
wisely points out in a recent op-ed Non-violent
resistance is Palestine’s most powerful weapon that "Palestinians must redefine martyrdom".
Ibish mentions the fact that "The [Israeli] occupation is a system
of discipline and control over a subjugated people by a powerful
foreign army. Worse, one of the main tasks of those occupying troops
is to facilitate and protect the settlement project, which basically
means taking land from its [Palestinian] owners and illegally giving
it to [Israeli] colonists." Ibish knows the facts, understands the
very real plight of the Palestinians, but Ibish does not get
distracted and he does not go galloping off into an anti-Israel
rant. He keeps calm and he keeps our focus on empowering
Palestinians with realistic options and good advice.

To honor a tragic
history, we must work for peace : "The
only way to honor our tragic histories is to
create a future for our children free of
man-made tragedy. This means making peace fully,
completely and without reservation, between
Israel and Palestine." Ziad
Asali

Where
is the Palestinian Gandhi?Zogby:
What we found was that
there has been a continued erosion in the favorable ratings
Americans have of both Arabs and Muslims, posing a threat to
the civil rights and political inclusion of both Arab
Americans and American Muslims.

Emanating from the conviction of the Arab countries that a
military solution to the conflict will not achieve peace or
provide security for the parties, the council:

1. Requests Israel to
reconsider its policies and declare that a just peace is its
strategic option as well.

2. Further calls upon Israel
to affirm:

I- Full Israeli
withdrawal from all the territories occupied since 1967,
including the Syrian Golan Heights, to the June 4, 1967 lines as
well as the remaining occupied Lebanese territories in the south
of Lebanon.

II- Achievement of a
just solution to the Palestinian refugee problem to be agreed
upon in accordance with U.N. General Assembly Resolution 194.

III- The acceptance of the establishment of a
sovereign independent Palestinian state on the Palestinian
territories occupied since June 4, 1967 in the West Bank and
Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem as its capital.

3. Consequently, the Arab countries affirm the following:

I- Consider the
Arab-Israeli conflict ended, and enter into a peace agreement
with Israel, and provide security for all the states of the
region.

II- Establish normal relations with Israel in the
context of this comprehensive peace.